Aspects of the present invention relate in general to distributed computing environments and, more specifically, to a method for estimating the cost of hosting a virtualized service in a distributed computer environment.
Estimating the costs of supporting an application or other function within a distributed computing environment can be particularly challenging. In a distributed computing environment, multiple hardware and software resources are combined and interconnected to support one or more functions. A fundamental accounting requirement for an organization is to calculate present costs and estimate future costs associated with providing a function or service. However, in a distributed computing environment, it can be difficult to ascertain which physical resources are contributing to a function and the extent of that contribution. Consequently, calculating usage-based chargeback for physical resources used by various departments to support a range of functionality can be challenging.